Military Conduct, TPUSA, 2026 Predictions, Recommendations and Rants

Atheists, agnostics, long haired weirdos, short haired weirdos, Vandross. Welcome to the Politics Guys, a place for bipartisan, rational and civil debate on American politics and policy. I'm Trey Orndorff, a political scientist at Oklahoma Christian University. And I'm joined again on our midweek show with Mike Baranowski, a retired professor of political science. Mike, welcome back to our extra oversized package holiday gift extravaganza. Looking forward to it. We really kind of went not off the rails, but we got into some stuff, especially at the end of the weekend show. I am looking forward to picking up where we left off and having a good solid discussion about a bunch of stuff. Yeah. So we got a couple stories we're going to cover and then we're going to do some fun things. We're going to talk about our politicians political journeys. We're going to have some rants and recommendations and we're going to make political predictions for the upcoming year in a new holiday. Well, an old holiday tradition for the politics Guys. So the first story that we're going to get to that we had left off was Hegseth versus Kelly. And in some ways that's not a bad one since my guess is even by the time you're listening to this in the middle of the week, we probably haven't seen a resolution to this particular one. But things got really real, if you will, in the ongoing feud between Senator Kelly and the Pentagon. Last week on 15 December, the Pentagon, which again the administration has begun referring to as the Department of War, officially escalated its preliminary review of Senator Mark Kelly into a formal command investigation. Now, unless you're just deep into these kind of things, your first question is going to be what is that? And fair question. A command investigation allows for an investigating officer to gather evidence and conduct interviews, importantly under oath, about a particular individual. And the Pentagon has floated the possibility even of recalling Kelly to active duty for the purposes of a court martial based on what happens in that command investigation, which would be an unprecedented move for anybody that long out of the military, but especially unprecedented for a sitting United States senator who in his case retired a decade ago. Now why all of this? Well, the fight centers on a social media video featuring Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers with military or intelligence backgrounds, including Representative Jason Crow and Senator Eliza Slotkin. In the video, they spoke directly to service members and here's what they said that was at the center of the controversy. Quote, our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders, you must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law of law or our Constitution, end quote. Now, President Trump responded by branding the group the Seditious Six and labeling their behavior as, quote, seditious behavior punishable by death, end quote. Now, of course, as is always the case with these kinds of statements, it was walked back by the. By the rest of the administration, but it is what it is. There's what he said. This prompted a wave of threats against the lawmakers, including a bomb threat to Kelly's Arizona offices. Now, we've got a war of words basically going on. Mike Hegseth has made clear that he sees the video as a direct assault. Excuse me? Trump has made clear that he sees the video as a direct assault on military hierarchy. Hegseth thinks this is a mistake. He has argued that the video encourages troops to second guess their commanders and in his words, sows doubt and confusion in the ranks and undermines the chain of command. Things moved online when Hegseth mocked Kelly's service concerning his uniform. Hegseth said, so Captain in quotation marks, Kelly, you can't even display your uniform correctly. Your medals are out of order and rows are reversed. When you are recalled to active duty, it'll start with a uniform inspection. Now. There'S all kinds of critiques on this, but you of all people, this is like, I'm happy that you're on the show, buddy, because you are a retired Marine. And if there's anything that I know, if you want a straight answer about military things, you go to a Marine. And that's not a joke. That is an honest. I'll never forget. I was in graduate school, and there were Marines out, and there's, like, rain pouring. It was a pouring day, and they're in uniform. And as a result, I recognized you can't have an umbrella if you're a Marine in those circumstances. And they're just getting drenched. And some of my classmates were like, isn't like, what are they doing? I went, they can't. And they're like, no. Like, seriously. I'm like, no, seriously, they really can't. Nobody believed me. And then we got into class, and there was another former Marine who was around a professor, and he was like, yeah, hoorah. I saw him out there. And then the rest of the class is like, trey was right. So I really do. I'm not, not any kind of teasing way. I have seen a bunch of different commentary on the medals and some of these items. But, Mike, I'd really love us for you to give that kind of perspective. Because from my perspective, seeing the Secretary of Defense put captain in quotation marks for anybody who's been retired from the military, that's what seems like really out of decorum rather than, I don't know, maybe the end. I don't even know how to analyze the metal thing. You know, that's beyond my expertise, my knowledge. I've read about it a little bit and I've seen some different answers. So help us understand some of those items, because this just seems really un. Decorum all the way around in a lot of ways. Help us understand. Well, the whole. I mean, the whole social media thing is, of course, just the standard ridiculousness where you try to own the other side and so forth, but the actual legal issues are a little more. Yeah, that command. The command investigation. Yeah, yeah. So when you, when you become. When you. When you're in the military, you're subject to something called the ucmj, the Universal Code of Military Justice. And it is different from civilian law. And in one particular case, well, there are obviously different offenses and things like that. You know, like dereliction of duty is not like a civilian law thing, but there's a part of the UCMJ called Article 134, called the General Article or the catch all Articles. And basically the idea is that anything, I won't paraphrase it, anything that interferes with loyalty, morale, or good order or discipline, or brings discredit on the armed forces is potentially a chargeable offense under the UCMJ Article 134. Now, this is almost always used simply or just for very usually serious type offenses. But the idea is that the military, the government, has a compelling interest in maintaining order, maintaining discipline, and that in some cases overrides standard First Amendment rights. Like, for instance, you know, you could go up to me, or I could go up to you and say, you know, you're a no account, worthless son of a bitch and you should just go off and die somewhere, that's perfectly fine. Well, it's not perfectly fine, but you get the idea. But if you are. If I was, Sergeant Baranowski and I went to my platoon commander and said that that's a real problem. And so that's why you don't really give up your rights. But they are the counterweight of the government's interest here, means that they can have those sort of things. And so in Kelly's case, the argument is, well, this sort of statement actually can sow confusion and interfere with good order and discipline. It's a weak case, a very Weak case. And what makes it even weaker is that Kelly is in fact retired. Now, if you're retired, basically you can be called back to duty if you are retired. And it's not everyone who is in the military and leaves is retired. It's basically people who are drawing retirement pay, served out their term, that sort of thing. So this wouldn't be subject to me or most people who don't serve an entire career in the military. But the bar is especially higher for calling people back to active duty, to court Masterful. And for this. This is not something that's going to happen. And even on the very unlikely chance that it does, it will almost certainly not result in any sort of real action. And so this has basically been a political sort of thing. And unfortunately, we don't even know what official charges or what sort of the basis of this calling him back to duty might be, because while there was an official Navy report that was submitted to DoD counsel, it has not been made publicly available. So we don't even, we can't even really look at what the specific arguments are. Not surprising, because there's really not a whole lot there because not only is Senator Kelly protected by the First Amendment here, he's also protected, arguably, I think, a good argument by the speech and debate clause, which would give him additional protection here. And so this is clearly, to me at least part of, just part and parcel of a long string of investigations, prosecutions, threats that have been done by the Trump administration to try to chill dissent. I mean, this is pretty significant. There was a special report from Reuters that came out about a month ago, found that there are at least 470 documented cases of the administration retaliating against dissenters, including 269 federal officials, 104 former government officials, 29 law firms, 10 universities, and nine media outlets. That is a highly unusual level of retribution. And honestly, you have to go back to the Nixon administration to find anything even close. And still it's not even close. And what distinguishes this is just the absolute brazenness of this, just admitting that it's actually retribution. It's really, there's really no precedent in American politics at the presidential level to find something that's comparable, really have to look at something like Hungary under Viktor Orban or something like that. And of course, in some sections of the right, in the Republican Party, the MAGA movement, Orban is held up as a hero. I mean, he came before Congress and was warmly welcomed, that sort of thing. It's the idea that from these often called Post liberals that normalizing retribution as governance is perfectly okay and that's what you should want, in fact. And of course true conservatives find that anathema and I'm sure you do as well. And this is just part of this sort of thing. Yeah, and we talked about that on the main show, weekend show ourselves, you know, talking about that, you know, where is Mag on the spectrum? Are they conservative or not? You know, I answered. No, you answered the primary question that I had when I was looking at. But again, this is one of those areas where I'm pushing on my own expertise and I recognize that it didn't seem likely to me that you can make an Article 1 claim against somebody for the things that they did in relation to their, their serving out a term or a service in terms of a legislative position. Right. As a result of Article 1's debate clause. Right. It seems highly unlikely that. In other words, it doesn't seem likely that Congress could have unlegislated a constitutional provision that you have to be able to carry out your duties. Even if you thought that there was something about the video that could potentially. Again, I'm not suggesting that it does, but let's even just, let's say that it did. It seems unlikely that you could hit that. And the court has been pretty stringent on both seating members and on their debate clauses. But again, when you start getting in the. That's outside of my area of expertise. You know, I've never been. I know that it exists. Matter of fact, my closest being with it was just working a little bit with some people in D.C. who had some very specific portions of it. You know, it was never a part of my life. But so, but on the, you know, just on the visibility front of it of all of the figures in the Trump world, in some ways Hegseth bothers me more personally than other ones because here's a guy who's a drunk. Here's a guy who's on like wife 14, pretending to be, you know, Christian values warrior. Here's a guy who. Yeah, and again, I want to be really clear here. Right. I'm not suggesting that to be a man you got to be able to do a pull up or anything else. But if you're going to go around and suggest that the only men are the men who can do a pull up and then to like watch him not really do a. He just strikes me as. I feel like he comes after the individuals against which he. Because he can't come after himself. Like, in other words, I'm not physically capable of doing things. So the whole world needs to be physically capable of doing things. Right. Like, or, you know, you all should be really faithful to your wives because. Well, I never was. Like, okay, again, please, I want to be careful here. I'm not suggesting that just because you have two wives that you're somehow a terrible person or anything, but the fact that he comes at like, so he doesn't have some particularly distinguished military career and he, he's coming after somebody who does in fact have a distinguished military career. And you rightfully point out there's this difference about being retired that means you've served an entire. As a matter of fact, clarify for make sure that I'm getting that right. What do you have to do to make it to the retired status where you're getting paid? Because it's not nothing. I believe it's, I believe I want to say 20 years service. I might be wrong about that. But, but essentially if you just serve what like a single enl, a couple enlistment that at least a single enlistment that will not really qualify you for that. So this is, I mean, this to me seems clearly aimed at career military folks who might be inclined to speak out against the administration. Oftentimes upper level people, you know, at the upper officer level, the colonels, the captains in the Navy, which is the equivalent rank, or the generals, that kind of thing, admirals, to kind of get them to think twice, to say, well, you know, do I really want the hassle of speaking out against the administration? Because honestly, really here, even though nothing is going to happen to Senator Kelly, the process is the punishment because Kelly had to get an attorney, had to go through all this, had to deal with the threats and that. And if I'm just, if I'm some colonel or some general, some former colonel in general, and I really feel strongly about what the Trump administration is doing and defense is wrong, I'm gonna probably say, well, wait a second, I saw what happened to a frickin sitting US Senator. Do I really want to go there? Or is life too short? And I think a lot of folks are just going to say, you know, life's too short, man. And I get that. Like I said, I get the strategy. But I'll also say that I know there are some conservatives or some MAGA folks who would make what I would call the principled argument here, you might call them the Flight 93 Republicans. And for folks who don't know that reference, Flight 93 was the flight that went down in Pennsylvania where the folks stormed the cockpit on 9 11. This was the basis of a famous article that was written in 2016 before the election. And I want to say the Claremont Review or some conservative outlet arguing that, hey, if the plane is going down, the only rational thing to do is to storm the cockpit. And it doesn't matter if FAA regulations say, don't storm the cockpit. And so in this case, that's the argument, I think, both from the Orban folks in Hungary and the Trump folks here, saying, listen, the deep state is so pervasive and we're in such deep trouble that we just cannot honor these norms, we cannot honor these laws. We have to save the fundamental thing. And that would maybe call back to Lincoln saying, hey, saving the union is the key thing, and whatever we have to do to do that, we will do that. And so, you know, and certainly this has been taken up by, I think, some principled Republicans and conservatives, but a lot more people who just want vengeance is vengeance and don't give a damn about the health of the republic. And so I didn't want to be unfair to folks who believe this and what I would say is a more principled way. I wanted to present that argument. Oh, no, that's fair. I just have a hard time. This is one. You know, the goal, when I think about the show, is often, as a matter of fact, we'll even sometimes use tools to try to really think carefully about opposition positions and being fair to a variety of viewpoints. I'll be honest with you, Mike. I had a really. This is one of those stories where I just had a tough time. Yeah. Now that I understand that. The United 93 argument, I can hear that. But that's not exactly. I mean, I guess it's a principled argument. I don't know. I'd have to think about that a little bit more than to give that. But I hear that fascinating. But it's hard for me to see out of Kelly's video. I mean, in some ways, I think his video might be a little dramatic and overblown, but what senator doesn't have a dramatic, overblown video? Right. Like, yeah, I don't think that's what it's coming down to in this juncture. But if that's how he feels or if that's how he thinks he's going to gain some votes, so be it. But it's hard for me to see that as the beginning or a guy like Kelly of a deep state. But I guess part of the deep state would have to be weirdly Enough. Military, I guess I look at it this way, Trey, is that I see there are kind of two groups of people, the vast majority of people really who kind of support Donald Trump. I think truly and honestly believe that our country is in an existential crisis and that anyone who is against Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda is essentially complicit in the destruction of the imminent destruction of the country. And from that mindset, it's like, you know, if you see your kid in the street in a car coming, you say, wait, I can't jaywalk. No, you're gonna go right in there and save your kid. And I really think that most of the folks who are Trump supporters, that's what they believe deep in their hearts. And I respect that. I think they're wrong, but I respect the honesty of that belief. The people who I have nothing but utter contempt for are the people who know that that is not the case and use that to gain power and influence. And I mean Donald Trump, I mean Tucker Carlson, I mean Pete Hegseth, the folks who are clearly, it seems to me, just doing this for power and fame. They are disgusting, despicable human beings because they are taking advantage millions of decent Americans convincing them that the country is doomed. And so therefore we must have dictatorial powers and we must grind all our enemies under our heels. And so those people are just absolutely disgusting, beneath contempt. Unfortunately, I have to cut myself and Mike off right there because that comes at the end of the ad supported preview. If you want to get the rest of the show and there's a lot, this is a giant holiday packed episode. It's stuffed. You're going to have to become a supporter of the politics guys. And it's easy to do. It only just takes a couple of minutes. All you got to do is head down to the show notes and click on support. Or if you'd like, you can head to politicsguys.com support and do it the old fashioned way as well. 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As always, a giant thanks to our executive supporters who are Wilmer Marino, Daniel to Ryan Beasley, Don Oglesby, Derek Schmidt, Dakota Heath, Jason Chrysler, Dave Dean, Jeremy Larson, Brian Matzah, and Jody Miller. Remember, we're on hiatus after this. We'll be back with new episodes in 2026. I'll see you then. I won't give you the rest of the spiel because you already know that, other than to say thank you so much. And once again to say thank you to those who have been executive producers in 2025. And they are Wilma Marino, Daniel to Ryan Beasley, Don Oglesby, Derek Schmidt, Dakota Heath, Jason Chrysler, Dave Dean, Jeremy Larson, Brian Matzah, and Jody Miller. And we'll be back with a new episode after our break in January. I'll see you then. This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.